Skate on down!

 To the refund store

You found him, right here. I'm the one guy who never owned a Tony Hawks game growing up. Yes, marvel at my deformities, my shortcomings, my obvious lack of a childhood. Although bare in mind that didn't mean I never played a Tony Hawks game. I tried them around other people's houses, found them fun enough but never really wanted to buy them. Why would I want to be playing a skating game when I could be convincing the console owner to put on Grand Theft Auto instead? It simply made no sense whatsoever. And so that was my short lived- okay, that's not true. I did actually end up playing and owning one Skating game I liked so much I finished it; The Simpsons Skateboarding! Huh? That's one of the worst skating games ever and I'm a heathen for liking it as a kid? But I just liked the Simpsons... What, are you going to tell me bad things about my other Simpsons childhood game, Simpsons Wrestlin- Huh? That's regarded as even worse? (Damn, kid me had no taste.)

In actuality I did own a more realistic Skating game back during those days, although it ended up being a game for the Wii rather than the Xbox games everyone of my age range went on about. Can you guess what game it was? Yep, it was Skate. Or rather, 'Skate It'; as this Wii derivative was known as. It was actually quite innovative for the time too; featuring an exclusive Wii Balance board control system that was meant to simulate actually skating for oneself but I somehow recall being supremely unresponsive and hard to work with. (And this is a kid who nearly beat Simpsons Wrestling, so I have a resistance to poor controls apparently.) None of which is to belie some sort of intrinsically bound lost love for the Skate franchise, but rather more of a mutual respecting. I recognise a game I thought was pretty cool and would play again given the chance.

Since those days Skateboarding as a hobby obviously fell out of the spotlight, however in certain circles it's really picking back up I'm told. Probably something to do with the rise of a whole new generation trying to make themselves famous on Tiktok were I to guess. But then I only know skating is becoming popular again by proxy so I could be totally of base with that assumption. (It just seems the most logical deduction.) The stage is ripe for the grand return of a Skateboarding game considering the last great entry was a rerelease of an old classic Tony Hawks Skating game. You can't just leave your genre languishing on the heights of a rerelease! Do that and you're no better than the Sonic franchise! And god is that a fate worse than death...

So Skate 4 has long been rumoured ever since 2010 as being the sleeper agent game being worked on by EA whilst they completed their 'worst company in America' tour. Only for such rumours to pan out into nothingness as every skating fan twiddled their thumbs and decided to become productive members of society or some such rot. That was until very recently where it was revealed that a new Skate is a real possibility, and in fact it was actively being worked on in a very rudimentary, but still watchable state. Remember that fans were starved for content; even seeing a video labeled early-early-early Alpha without any backgrounds and some missing character models managed to draw wide spread praise and pages of encouraging messages from hopeless hopefuls with stars in their eyes and tears down their cheeks. What could possibly go- oh it's an EA game; what do you think?

Yes, it's a Live Service. And what is quickly growing into one of the most outdated gimmicks of the industry is being trotted out to the pony show once again. Seriously, when was the last time that 'Live Service' meant anything more than 'disappointing launch product doomed to die a long slow death?' Tell me true because I'm drawing a total blank! What we have here is a dead and flogged horse being beaten ragged by a company who just cannot, and will not, let it go. I swear at this point EA must have lost more money on failed live services than they've gained from successes; but they're still chasing the white whale of that one mega hit which will put their great grandkids through college. In that most puerile and cynical of contexts, I can somewhat bitterly respect the dedication.

Otherwise I'm at a loss. For what possible reason could a skating game benefit from a Live Service model? I'm not one of those bores who believe that Live Service as a concept is inherently broken; there's a couple of games that wear it really well and have done wonders with it; but it has it's place. We're talking a fertile ecosystem nurtured with content drops and variety that stirs the stable economy of it's players. This is a game about skating around skate parks. What are the content drops going to be? New Cosmetics? A couple new parks? Seriously, what kind of legs does this sort of model have for Skate? What's the 5 year roadmap look like? Because I have a feeling it cuts off after year one, just call it a hunch.

Ask the team director and he'll tell you that this new Skate (It's just called 'Skate' by the way; because modern creativity is dead) was always meant to be a Live Service game and I am going to call that man a bold faced liar. This is my accusation, and a year after launch after they announce the live services are drying up and fans turn around and realise that the amount of support they got is on-par with or less-than what they would have received from a traditional DLC cycle, I'm going to call back to this moment for my proof. I don't have their business plan; I've just seen this play out time and time again, at this point I know the dance better than EA does. Announcing this game is a Live Service is literally just declaring you want it die with a whimper, not a bang.

And can I just say for a moment; no, Live Services is not the next evolution of game design. It's belayed and stretched out design and development which is crowd funded. It's early access without the warning for due diligence. The very few 'Live Services' who live up to their promise of a finished game with extras, tend to end up putting out content in the same manner an indie studio working their way up to full release would. Except the road-map is constantly being stretched out and there's no 1.0 version in sight. You can lie to yourself and call that the 'next paradigm of design' all that you like, but just don't go making a fool out of yourself declaring that in public. You make the whole of the community look bad spouting rubbish like that.

EA's Skate is going for the 'pointless award' and I think it's a shoe-in so far. I would say that I'm happy for the team to prove me wrong, but let's be honest with each other, you and I; they won't. And it's for this reason I'm just going to have to invoke the bogey man word which sets all the heckles rustling whenever it's called out: because this is a obvious cash grab move. They've got a single game's worth of content and they want to make 5 games worth of revenue out of it. At the end of the day that's how the mathematics is going to shape out. I ain't no Nostradamus, I'm speaking from learned experience, and anyone who is legitimately, and sometimes vehemently, defending the EA way of doing things; utterly loses their rights to complain when their Live Service roadmap is a hollow, time wasting, mess. You lose that right, and we gain the 'told you so' right. Deal?